In recent years, healthcare-acquired infections (HAI's) have become a growing concern. Notably, many patients admitted to a hospital already have a weakened immune system making it very easy for them to get infected by a contaminated surface. In particular, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 1 out of every 25 patients who are admitted to a hospital will contract a HAI and, of those, 1 out of every 9 patients will succumb to the infection. Every year this results in more than two million patients contracting HAI's causing an estimated 100,000 deaths.
One of the leading causes of HAI's occurs when hospital staff, for example, do not maintain proper sanitizing procedures, such as washing their hands in-between seeing patients. This can lead to the spread of harmful microorganisms onto many surfaces in a patient's room, with one of the most frequent surfaces being that of the privacy curtain, which may be repeatedly touched, e.g., opened and closed, by unwashed staff hands. The privacy curtain also can become unsanitary from touching by patients and/or other visitors or through any number of other ways, including accidental contact with infected blood, urine, and/or feces, for example.
Various methods and devices have been employed over the years in an effort to reduce the spread of infectious disease via unsanitary curtains. In one example, the curtain is simply removed and laundered. However, each curtain is often a unique length and designed such that each one must be tracked so as to go back to the same location. Then, each curtain must be reinstalled in the room. This can be a very time consuming and expensive process, often taking several hours of labor for a single hospital employee. Further complicating the issue, as a result of the difficulty and time required to keep privacy curtains sanitary, such curtains too often are either not cleaned properly or just not enough.
While it is recognized that laundering unsanitary curtains may be the best or only option in certain circumstances, regular laundering to remove harmful microorganisms that can cause infectious disease may not be necessary to maintain sanitary conditions. To that end, non-laundering methods and associated devices have also been applied to curtains in an effort to simplify the sanitizing process. In one example, a chemical disinfectant is used to wipe down the curtain, in place. However, this method can be difficult to perform because curtains, e.g., privacy curtains, are not nearly as easy to clean as a solid surface, such as countertop. Another method involves switching from reusable to disposable curtains. However, many hospitals do not have sufficient storage capacity for a surplus inventory of disposable curtains, and replacing the curtain in every room can be a time consuming and expensive process. And given the frequency of how often disposable curtains should be changed on a daily basis, both of these reasons tend to lead to disposable curtains not being replaced as often as needed.
Another method for sanitizing curtains includes using an ultraviolet area sterilizer (UVAS) to sterilize an entire room. With this method, the time required to sanitize an object within the room, e.g., a privacy curtain, is calculated by factoring in the distance from the ultraviolet (UV) light source to the object. Given how far away each object in an average patient/surgical room is, complete room sterilization can take as long as several hours. Furthermore, there is the chance that some areas of the room, specifically the privacy curtain if it is bunched up, may not be completely sanitized. Finally, these UVAS machines can be very expensive costing as much as $100,000 per unit.
In still yet another example, germicidal UV hand-held wands have been used to sterilize the surfaces of various objects. These wands can operate using incandescent or fluorescent ultraviolet-C (UV-C) lights. However, there are many limitations to the use of currently available UV light wands. For example, such devices can give non-uniform exposure because the user merely waves the light over the surface. Also each user is different and, thus, yields a different level of efficacy. Further, there is a concern with respect to UV-C exposure to users and bystanders because UV-C radiation can be more damaging to human eyes and more carcinogenic to skin than UV-A and UV-B radiation.
It thus would be beneficial to provide a device and method for sanitizing hung curtains, such as in a healthcare setting, that can reduce the risk of spreading infectious diseases and that can be safe and easy to use and can be less costly and time consuming than other currently available methods and devices.